I’m the type of person that believes that a rental agreement between an individual and a private owner is something confidential. While I must admit that part of me enjoys getting positive reviews from people, I’m still not totally on board with public reviews of private individuals and private companies. (My opinion of public reviews for public companies and government are completely different.) This is why I am a supporter of non-disparagement clauses in rental agreements.

Today while looking into non-disparagement clauses, I ran across this article called “4 Reasons Why Non-Disparagement Clauses are a Bad Idea“. While the article certainly advocates the all of the reasons one would argue against non-disparagement clauses, it does not address reasons of how non-disparagement clauses can be a good idea. In response to this article, I give you my article:

4 reasons why non-disparagement clauses are a GOOD idea

1.) Negative reviews are forever. With regard to negative reviews, the crime does not fit the punishment. A customer may have had a negative experience for only 2 hours, or 2 days, or some other finite amount of time. However, when a negative review is posted it stays there forever. Even if the review is credible it’s not fair for the recipient when the reviewer’s experience was measured in hours, not a lifetime. My opinion would be different if negative reviews stayed online for equal amount of time that the reviewer were inconvenienced. A negative review damages the recipient forever, and this is not fair.

2.) Non-disparagement clauses are agreed to by all parties. Typically, non-disparagement clauses provide a clearly defined resolution path that is agreed on by all parties before services are rendered. This gives the customer a chance to decide whether he would like to move forward with the service, and it gives the merchant the freedom to do business with people who aren’t into taking to the internet to express their public disapproval every time something doesn’t go their way. Good non-disparagement clauses are not to censor people. They are to provide a constructive path to problem resolution that is not damaging to either party and is agreed upon before any business is transacted.

3.) Well over half the negative reviews I read are libelous and defamatory. Take for example this quote from a review on vrbo: “One side of the electric toaster was defective and almost caught fire when we tried to use it.” Either the toaster catches fire or it doesn’t, and there is no reason to allude to anything more. This reviewer is setting himself up to get sued by using such a defamatory tone in his tact. If you feel you must save the world from a bad toaster, there’s a way to say you had trouble with the toaster without trying to lead people to believe that the place nearly burned to the ground. Most people can’t write reviews fairly and instead resort to extreme exaggeration. This causes undo harm to the merchant. While good information may be found in negative reviews, I find mostly that the information is less helpful to the reader than it is harmful to the merchant. If negative reviews are to be written, then people who leave those negative reviews need to be held to a standard. To live by example, I just stayed at a place up in Pigeon Forge, TN. While there I was inconvenienced by having to use a plunger to unplug toilets, twice. Am I about to rush out to save the world from this place by leaving a negative review? No, I am not. The reason why is because it wouldn’t be fair for the owner. I was only inconvenienced by a matter of 5 or 10 minutes. I’m not about to go say anything negative about the owner that will stick with him for a lifetime.

4.) Non-disparagement clauses help limit the proliferation of extortion sites like yelp. Yelp, and sites like them, give people a place to leave negative reviews. Yelp then calls the merchant asking the merchant for money before the merchant can participate in any responses or conflict resolution. This is extortion in it’s purest form, and merchants should not have to endure this. Since non-disparagement clauses stop the negative reviews before they even happen, it also stops the proliferation of unscrupulous websites like Yelp. With that said, consider the company above that wrote, “4 Reasons Why Non-Disparagement Clauses are a GOOD Idea”. They are a company whose business model is focused around getting money from merchants, go figure.